Trumpism: None Dare Call it National Socialism

Except Paul Krugman that is:

"And then there’s the empty box. Once upon a time that box was filled by southern Democrats, who preserved Jim Crow while supporting the New Deal. But they’ve all moved over to the GOP now, and in the process become anti-social-insurance. But there are plenty of voters who want Social Security and Medicare for people who look like them, but not those other people. And at some level Trump is catering to that unserved population."

"Of course, Trumpism is a really bad name for this, partly because the man himself isn’t actually coherent, partly because it’s still likely that he’s a case of hair today, gone tomorrow. And maybe nobody else will make a play for that box. But it’s also possible that we’ll see the rise of a movement that needs a better name. Hmm. How about National Social Democracy? Any problems with that?"

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?module=BlogMain&action=Click&region=Header&pgtype=Blogs&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion

He's dead right and I've made the point that Trump is the natural descendant of George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/gop-pscyhoanalysis-william-buckley.html?showComment=1439941631096#c8714351559241845146

He also gets a lot from Ross Perot but in fairness to Perot he never ran on bigotry and was that rare bird, a populist of the Center. AS Ezra Klein points out there are all kinds of disparate ideas from the Right and the Left that can be combined for a winning ideology-at least with the electorate if not the elites. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/yes-donald-trump-is-moderate-candidate.html

Scott Sumner also had a piece somewhat in that vein at Econolog. It's actually a very pessimistic post: The message is that people will never allow there to be a welfare state if they think people that don't look like them will be the beneficiaries. 

". It seems to me that Europe stepped right up to the edge of moving on a track to becoming the United States of Europe, didn't like what it saw, and lurched back for essentially nationalistic reasons. Call it the impossible trinity: Big welfare states, fiscal union, and cultural diversity--you can only have two. The EU realized it would have to get rid of one of the three. America progressives were outraged that they stepped back from fiscal union, and didn't write Greece a big check. But the alternatives were a polite version of ethnic cleansing and/or getting rid of the welfare state---I doubt American progressives would have approved of those choices either. Didn't the German finance minister want Greece out of the euro? That's the "clean" solution."


" Indeed I don't think American progressives who love Bernie Sanders and want us to become a big diverse version of Sweden have any idea of what they are up against. Their project will fail. If they don't want it to fail in a Donald Trump direction, then I'd suggest they rethink their views on the applicability of the Swedish welfare state model to America."


http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/08/is_europe_becom.html

A few reactions. 

A. It's not the main point of his argument but I'm not a Bernie Sanders fan in any way shape or form as anyone he reads me regularly knows. And as he support is solely from white liberals, the irony is that their sentiment may not be so different from the Trump voters as they might think. 

I mean what Klein and Matt Yglesias and others at Vox have shown-and I love Vox and can't recommend it enough if you want to actually understand the news; it's a great idea: while you can read the news lots of places on the web Vox unpacks a lot of things for you-have shown is that a winning strategy for anyone not encumbered by the elites of both major parties is

1. Coming out very strongly for single payer and social security expansion

2. Going Trumpist on immigration.

3. Coming out virulently prolife. 

This would be enough to get some extreme voters on both the Left and the Right. It wouldn't have to be this exact platform. You could come out more reasonably prolife like Trump. Or you could run on something else to please the Far Right like maybe coming out very strongly against gun control. 

My point is that item 1 would have the Bernie maniacs eating out of your hand and they wouldn't care about 2 and 3. I'm basing this on the time I used to hang out at Fireodglake among other things. 

B. Is this a clever argument by Sumner to blame liberals for the rise of Trumpism?

In all seriousness, Trump is the outgrowth of the GOP for years playing games on this issue. You could say that this was a long time coming as every single election season the party has moved a little further to the Right. 

It's astonishing but Mitt Romney's 'self-deport' is to the Left of every Republican in the race now including Jeb who has used the anchor baby slur and hasn't closed the door on ending birthright citizenship either. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/jeb-bush-is-now-right-of-mitt-romney-on.html?showComment=1440067906650#c1786109798872912918

The Wall Street Journal was right in it's critique of Trumpism which is a disaster economically and politically. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-wall-st-journals-war-with.html

The trouble is this is after the cow has left the barn so them shutting it now doesn't help much. Even as recently as 2013 the GOP had a shot to turn this around but of course didn't. 

The party had agreed that on immigrating at least they had been wrong-Mitt Romney's self-deport was admitted to be the disaster it was. 

The WSJ was pushing hard for immigration reform. But then the Heritage Foundation convinced the GOP that they didn't need Latinos. they would just double up on the white vote as if they hadn't already doubled up on that in the past on what is now a shrinking demographic.

Now you can say that the WSJ throughout on immigration has been the party's ego-Trump is the id who brings back the repressed-according to Freudian terms. 

But the Journal has failed in its role as well. That's how we got here. Once the House GOP put the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration bill on the shelf and derided it as 'Harry Reid's bill' the WSJ didn't want to step on the base's toes and so also acted as if the failure of immigration was the Senate Democrats' fault. 

The Journal also criticized Obama's executive action strenuously. So in the end they may have understood immigration reform economically but partisanship won out. They were willing to push for reform only so far; to actually admit that in this case the Dems were on the right side of the issue was a bridge too far. So they didn't blame Boehner for tabling reform but Harry Reid. 

So the rise of Trump is the natural endgame of years of denial and playing politics for those who knew better.