Why Trump is winning

I am reading a lot of poetry these days. Call it escapism. Listening to the news makes me depressed and no one wants to feel low. So, I turned to poetry. A modest investment of about £8 gets you 'The Poetry Review' in your well ordered local bookstore and in a recent issue I found a poem by Mel Pryor called 'Cliff'. It's neat and has some nice turns of phrases such as when she talks about 'these daily unminuted miracles' (The Poetry Review, p.17).

I guess it's the poem's sense of ending that appeals to me. Recently, things in the political world have felt increasingly like we are standing at a precipice. But, and this is my point, this is a mistake and it can become a serious political error if progressives believe that everyone feels like that. Dread is not a political motivator. So let's look at the facts.

Trump's popularity with his base feeds on public outburst (and plenty of unacceptable ill-tempered language) about minorities, people he does not like (anymore), and railings against the establishment. The reaction of progressives is instructive. They dislike his foul verbiage, the damage to established institutions he does with his tweets and his exploitation of the presidency for his own gain. They dislike that he offers the American people some populist grub and that many of them take it.

But here is the crux. Progressives are indignated by Trump's actions and tweets, and as they become more and more outraged they start to believe that, if only Trump was gone (impeached or otherwise) they would win again and everything would go back to normal. They take the messenger for the message. There are already signs that Democrats tailor their mid-term campaign to the tune of Trump. In a sense, they take populism's bait and swallow it hook line and sinker.

Indignation is always a bad compass in politics. Whilst indignation is the way in which we police our norms of public behaviour, it is in essence a blunt tool. It only reaches as far as our gut feelings last and that's not very far indeed. Remember the little dead boy that was carried on to a Turkish beach by a police officer at the height at the Syrian refugee crisis? I bet you do! And what came of it? Exactly.

The reason Trump won (and this is what progressives don't want to hear) is that neither the Clinton campaign nor the Democratic Party actually made a positive offer to the American people in 2016. I vividly remember a moment in the primaries during Clinton's first bid for the candidacy of the Democratic Party (in 2006) when she started to tear up and declared that she had 'so many opportunities for this country'. What these were she showed us ten years later in 2016: a long list of things to do for ... transgender people, women, minorities, gays, and any other poor marginalised soul in America. But what she could never say is why any middle of the road, no nonsense American who didn't define himself by his or her sexual or racial identity should vote for her. She never told middle America why she should be in office.

Government jobs for everyone - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Source: Mark Lennihan/AP

I know some of these words hurt (it's indignation again, see). We all want to do our best for minorities and people on the margins of society. But what progressives often forget is that campaigning on issues that matter to only a handful of people is unlikely to succeed. And so we go again, come the mid-term elections. The latest candidate to make the headlines is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - somebody who says that the border force should be abolished and that everyone should be guaranteed a job by the government. Familiar stuff? Yes, we heard this before. If you are old enough, that is, and your memory reaches back to the 1970 and 1980s.

So, what's going wrong? The answer is simple. Whilst Trump dishes out populist messages, progressives are sidetracked by their indignation and veer to the extreme left, strengthening those parts of their electoral offer that made them lose the last election: identity politics. The people who may feel less and less represented are those in the centre, the moderates who do not think that transgender toilets are the most urgent thing to instal when there is an opiod crisis affecting communities up and down the country.

What may break it for Trump is not his ill-tempered language or his tweeting but the economy. At the moment, the American economy is overheating. He is urging the Fed to lower interest rates, which would be catastrophic for inflationary pressures. He may just turn out to steer the American economy into a serious crisis and middle America won't tolerate that.

The maths show that Democrats are likely to win back the House of Representatives in November, yet are unlikely to win the Senate. But if they think that this paves the way for a win in the presidential elections in 2020 (or indeed for impeachment) they are mistaken. Up till now, they have nothing to offer to those in the centre ground of politics. All they offer is their indignation and their desire to boot out Trump. That's not an electoral programme.

If they don't change course, then I guess there is more poetry for me.

From Populism to Occupy

Observers of the political landscape are often puzzled by the disappearance of the Occupy Movement from public view. Another mystery however is also its emergence in the first place. What was it that motivated people to camp out in the cold in cities across the world?

If there is a unifying theme across the Occupy Movement then it is probably discontent. But discontent with what? The original thrust was directed against Wall Street, or what Occupy participants dubbed 'greed' amongst bankers. Many have commented that this was more an observation of human frailty than a clear cut analysis of what ailed the economy. So, perhaps the reason why the Occupy Movement fizzled out was that it lacked a coherent understanding of what it wanted to change.

Recently, I have been reading Richard Hofstadter's seminal study on Populism in America, 'The Age of Reform'. When I say Populism I don't refer to populism as an opportunistic appeal to popular support. Rather, Populism between 1890 and 1930 was a significant third party movement in the United States with socialist and agrarian undertones. It led to some electoral surprises in some states but ultimately, its main contender William Jennings Bryan was defeated in the presidential elections of 1896.

What does this have to do with the Occupy Movement? Hofstadter's account is fascinating because it charts the diverse origins of the Populist movement and its highly incoherent ideology. It was a manifestation of protest against the status quo, but never achieved any ideological coherence or consistent electoral strategy. In effect, its diversity of themes was probably one reason for its temporary local success, bringing together discontented farmers as well as more dubious figures of public life with anti-semitic tendencies. Yet, what united them all was a yearning for a glorious past and the railing against an 'out of control' finance system that punished ordinary folk by keeping inflation low (the discussion was mainly around the Gold Standard and so-called Bi-metalism).

There is no doubt that there was serious hardship in the United States at the turn of the century. The longing for a harmonious past however where the finance sector is doing the bidding of the economy and greed as a human trait is morally castigated charts a significant parallel between the Populist doctrine and the Occupy Movement.

The most interesting parallel however is the inconsequentialism of either in the long term. The main reason seems to lie in the fact that neither movement managed to undertake a serious analysis of the capitalist system. The Populist pamphlets of the early 1900s read just like some declarations of the Occupy Movement: like a rag bag of moral invectives and disenchantment. The moral tone of both movements is strikingly different to the hard headed Marxist analysis of the capitalist system. Marx's capitalist contributes to the rise of the working class by ruthless exploitation, hence his actions are justified through fulfilling his destiny in the unfolding history of class war.

For the Occupy Movement, just like for the Populist Movement at the end of the 19th century, what was the core of evil was usury or greed, themes that were often laced with anti-semitic rhetoric. As a movement, Populism and Occupy may never have had great chances of success although it certainly galvanised many people who sympathised with its (fuzzy) aims. As an analysis of the weaknesses of capitalism however, both miserably failed and it's this weakness that contributed to the lack of significant reforms of the financial system. It seems we are all the poorer for it.

Solidarity in action - why the highest earners pay more than enough

As the debate about spending and tax rises still rages in the US, it may be useful to have a quick look at the specific income tax rates that apply to working people. In Britain, the view is that US citizens pay far less income tax than we do. The US, so the story goes, is a low tax country.

If one looks at the marginal tax rates for individuals that apply to their taxable income, nothing could be further from the truth. The New York Times has helpfully published a graphic detailing the marginal tax rates and how they developed over time.

(you can find the graphic HERE)

The graph is revealing. Despite the incessant news about rich people avoiding tax, the tax rate for top earners in the US ($350k plus) is similar to that in the UK. The rate is 39.5 per cent. That is only 5.5 percentage points lower than the top marginal tax rate in the UK. In fact, it is only 0.5 percentage points more than the tax rate Labour had levied (40%) on the highest earners from 1997 to 2010.

On top of that, people working in the US of course also pay local taxes, which adds to the burden. This picture throws a different light on the argument that 'tax rises can pay down the debt' of the US or the UK. The fact is that the highest earners in either country already contribute about half of all income tax revenue. Their tax burden is already a multiple of what the lowest earners contribute to the treasury. That's solidarity in action.

Four more years but the shine has come off

So there it is. The people have spoken and they have handed another victory to Barack Obama. Whilst there was less enthusiasm for his re-election amongst many Americans, he eventually mustered enough energy to mobilise many of his original supporters to give him a second chance. And a second chance it is since neither has he achieved much of that which he spoke so eloquently of in 2008, nor has he fulfilled the hopes of so many of his countrymen.

The main narrative of this campaign was that it was a choice between two widely different visions of America. I beg to differ. Whilst the Obama campaign ran a vicious personal campaign against Romney, the Romney camp was careful to avoid shrill sounds and personal attacks. In fact, observers on the left of the political spectrum corroborated that when they spoke of a 'Chicago' campaign run by the Obama camp (Chicago politics is famous for the nasty vilification of your opponent and the spreading of 'halftruths' or outright lies).

So as the shine has come off the Obama campaign, the Romney camp seems to have mainly articulated a moderate vision of America that widely commanded respect amongst independents. Romney's address to his supporters reflected this gracious and fair attitude in the political struggle, while Obama's speech to his supporters seems to have been mainly a repeat of the hollow phrases and high flying rhetoric from 2008.

Yet the media distortion about Romney and his supporters goes even further than that. The media suggested repeatedly that there were major differences between the opponents. This is largely wishful thinking. Take the reform of the banking sector and the effect of Wall Street on the US economy. Obama had strong words of criticism for Wall Street and the investment banks in 2008 yet failed to deliver a single effective reform package that would prevent a similar breakdown of the banking system.

Or look at the bailout of the car industry. Whilst this clearly won Obama plaudits from the car makers and their unions, the money mostly went to pay enormous pension liabilities that had built up over decades. This only achieved one thing: the American car industry is back to square one. It remains largely uncompetitive vis-a-vis foreign car makers and technological innovation is low. Obama may have saved it temporarily from going to the wall, but it is still heading for a crash, bailout or no bailout.

The most important weakness of all may however be Obama's personality. In an insightful documentary Andrew Marr spoke to close advisors of the President and they indicated that, despite the rhetoric about collaboration, Obama is not somebody who knows how to work together with others. He (perhaps too much) relies on his intellectual strength and believes that by simply thinking hard about a problem, he will come up with the right answer. This showed throughout his presidency. As some of his supporters argued, Obama may be the most lonely president ever, unable to reach out to colleagues and work with them to achieve robust solutions to difficult problems. This contrasts markedly with Romney who as governor favoured a managerial style, often delegating problems to capable staff and colleagues.

And so, I suspect, we will see more of the same. A president increasingly frustrated by an allegedly intransigent 'Washington' political system and hemmed in by an inability to reach out to others. What Obama does not seem to understand is that rational thought may sometimes be a poor guide for political decision making. Politics is about people, not abstract ideas.

John Dos Passos' U.S.A.

Please nobody say reading 1200 pages of literature is not hard work! But in a way, I didn't much notice how long it took me or how much of my time it occupied. In fact, I loved reading those pages! I am talking about John Dos Passos' Trilogy 'U.S.A.', a brilliant if somewhat postmodern account of life in that most exasperating of all countries during the first quarter of the 20th century. 

John Dos Passos may not be a familiar name to many reader nowadays but he was certainly somebody who influenced the style of the so-called 'Lost Generation' writers in the early 20th century. His book 'Manhattan Transfer' is still widely read today. However, few probably still read his main work, the trilogy U.S.A. which he published over more than 20 years. One reason may be because he employed a cut and paste method for some of the sections in the book, including snippets from newspaper reports or newsreels. This gives his writing a slightly jumpy tone. Yet the main narrative in the book, following several protagonists through the upheaval of the first world war and its aftermath, is brilliantly executed and a gripping read.

John Dos Passos

Dos Passos had sympathies for the political left but his disenchantment with Communist politics of the Stalinist variety shines through clearly in his writings. What he captured more than anything else however in the book is the arbitrary nature of human destiny as people move through the jungle of social commitments and rejections. He also, perhaps unwittingly, formulated one of the greatest examples of why revolutions are so rare in human history. In a chapter on one of his protagonists (Richard Elseworth Savage) who volunteered for the Medical Corps of the US Army, Dos Passos writes of his determination to join the anti-war campaign. 

'One day he saw a pocket compass in a jeweler's window on the Rue de Tivoli. He went in and bought it, there was suddenly a fullformed plan in his head to buy a civilian suit, leave his uniform in a heap on the wharf at Bordeaux and make for the Spanish border. ... He even got ready a letter to send his mother... By gum, he must write some verse: what people needed was stirring poems to nerve them for revolt against their cannibal government. Sitting in the secondclass compartment he was so busy building a daydream of himself living in a sunscorched Spanish town, sending out flaming poems and manifestoes, calling young men to revolt against their butchers, poems that would be published by secret presses all over the world... At noon Dick got hungry and went to the diner to eat a last deluxe meal. He sat down at a table opposite a goodlooking young man in a French officer's uniform ... They lifted their glasses and looked into each other's eyes and laughed. ... They were never sober after eleven in the morning; it was calm misty weather; they were very happy. One night, when he was standing alone in the stern beside the small gun, Dick was searching his pocket for a cigarette when his fingers felt something hard in the lining of his coat. It was the little compass he had bought to help him across the Spanish border. Guiltily, he fished it out and dropped it overboard.' 

It seems our plans for personal happiness only temporarily intersect with the grand plans of history. Perhaps that's for the better.