Discussion: Behind "Make America Great", the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance

[birdford]

Half of America wants this.

Personally I can’t wait until the rubes have been totally fleeced of every last dollar and left to hang. Just the rude awakening they deserve.

A Donald voter I know told me the one hope he has was that Donald would do is help clean up DC and I just thought to myself you are so fucking naive to think Donald Trump is an honest businessman.

While I certainly agree with the first para, I don’t think the second will happen. There seems to be an idea on the Left that the more the country crashes and burns (which it will) the more the foral trumpers will “get it.”

They’ll never get it. America will become like Kansas and they still won’t do anything about it. They’re too far gone at this point.

the GOP in charge has completely avoided taking any political heat for a declining economy, cut pensions, education and health falling apart and so on. In part, that’s because the GOP in those states has been very careful to cut off the flow of information about what’s happening to voters and to co-opt Dem opposition

As I keep saying, we have lost the war, not just a battle. We are now officially a resistance. The MSM is largely going to be asleep and or actively trying to curry favor with the new administration on this as we go forward. The thought that any significant number of people who supported Trump are going to come out of their Facebook induced trance and understand that they are being bent over and reamed now is laughable - cognitive dissonance is not a problem for these folks. I know them and live among them, and they are focused on all kinds of things, but actual economic policy is not even on their radar. These are people whose ability to earn a good living has been destroyed and they blame unions - who have lost their houses and they blame poor people who also lost houses - whose children have little or no chance to break out of the downward spiral of the middle class and they blame Planned Parenthood and Muslims. We are in our own bubble here on the left but they are wrapped up in a right wing cocoon of acceptable thought that is so tight and reinforced daily I don’t think a lot of people on the left really get it. The onslaught of right wing media in every medium has made this inevitable, and the latest science shows that much of the difference between conservatives and liberals is physiological (see cortisol level studies) and that probably the least effective way to sway these voters is reason, logic or self interest. From our perspective they are voting against their own self interest - from their perspective they are voting on the side of God and against all of the scary weird things they keep seeing on TV.

To hope they get their just desserts is to hope for America to become a failed state. I will not stop fighting and talking, but I believe things are much worse than most of us realize at this point (as far as how little recourse we have to stop the Koch agenda), and I am basically an optimist. Bless Nancy Pelosi, TPM, Bernie, Hillary, Barack - but you have to believe me, for most of the people who supported Trump, these memes and tropes about liberals bad, media bad, unions bad, Muslims bad - are matters of core belief and not anything that is going to be shaken by the Republicans stripping away rights and social programs.

[asanders91360]

I said all during the campaigning that I didn’t trust the American people, since they voted for Reagan twice, to not vote for Trump. I now expect that my minimal Social Security income will be cut and I will die.
I wish on the Trumpanzees that they reap the whirlwind.
They will destroy America.
They are welcome to it.

[dickweed]

Well I don’t know if they will ever believe it or not, but 1) are an older portion of the population so there will probably be fewer and fewer each election and 2) when all their money is gone they may not vote democratic, but I’m guessing they just won’t vote they are so distraught. I think that’s a lot of the reason Obama one. Bush had run things into the ground and it motivated some folks to vote D and others just to sit at home.

[numbertwopencil]

I agree, I’d much rather read Skocpol than Judis.

Amazingly enough, this article still seems to be the most comprehensive account of what’s going to happen, and happen soon, anywhere. There are lots of reporters chasing Trump’s tweets, spinning DC gossip, and telling us how they/them/us/whoever feels about the changes but . . . this account lays out the broad outlines of what we know is planned. Alabama, Kansas, Wisconsin, and NC are the models . . . the same sets of people and canned legislation is at work in those states (and a few others) and those same people, institutions, and funders have fairly clear plans at the federal level.

Yes, sure, it’s not all perfectly sorted out. Kobach’s immigration (and voter suppression) work has played out slightly differently in Kansas, Alabama, and Arizona. Various Koch-funded think tank written laws have be challenged in NC in ways that they were not not in Wisconsin. State-level organizations funded by Koch (and related funders and institutions) have moved at differing speeds and effectiveness. The Alabama Policy Institute has a slightly different focus than the John Locke Foundation or the Civitas Institute in NC. Art Pope funds projects in NC that take the place of Koch-funded projects in other states.

And so on . . . It’s complex and it’s boring and some of it is murky (and getting murkier as the take over of state governments proceeds and transparency is reduced) and some of it is hitting road blocks but . . . it’s all in process, has left a legislative trail, and can be seen quite clearly in the states effected. And . . . that same group of people and funders have been fairly clear about their plans and the federal level and . . . now they are in power. Maybe they don’t have their hands on every lever but, whew, they appear to have access to most executive powers and soon enough they will be working to change the courts, to fill strategic vacancies, and reduce the roadblocks. The Federalist Society has opinions, doh, and now they get to make way, way more decisions about who gets what court job. The changes coming are endless and the are not starting from a blank slate. We know a lot about what’s going to happen, regardless of Ben Carson running HUD, or Steve Bannon getting a profile in Vanity Fair, or Trump getting into a Twitter war with the NYT.

I’d be delighted if TPM turned the whole site–until, say, the inauguration–into journalism that focuses on untangling what our new owners want and how they plan on going about getting it. Just fleshing out this Skocpol article is a huge task but it’s probably a doable project. (And I suspect more inside people will talk to reporters now, before the new administration cranks up, than later.) We wouldn’t miss much not knowing the gossip about Trump appointments and we can always skim through his twitter account to catch up. I’d sure like to be better educated about Kansas, Alabama, Wisconsin, and NC and I wish I a had better sense of what the myriad think tanks, institutes, and people who will shortly be in power have been thinking/doing over the last dozen years.

[birdford]

Amazingly enough, this article still seems to be the most comprehensive account of what’s going to happen, and happen soon, anywhere. There are lots of reporters chasing Trump’s tweets, spinning DC gossip, and telling us how they/them/us/whoever feels about the changes but . . . this account lays out the broad outlines of what we know is planned. Alabama, Kansas, Wisconsin, and NC are the models

Dead…F#$@ing…on. Someone has been doing their homework. What a great post - like it 100 times.

[eggrollian]

If we take the sucker to con ratio laid down by PT Barnum maxim “There’s a sucker born every minute, and two to take him” the ratio of suckers to cons is 2 to 1. If we assume the adult population of the US is about 240 million people, your looking at roughly 160 million suckers, roughly the number of people who shopped on Black Friday, or about 25 million more than bothered to vote in the recent election.

That’s a lot of fleecing.

[pauldownard]

This is where he got his slogan. Let there be no mistake.