"... What he seems to have carried from a boyhood in a blue-collar, union and Democratic family in Norfolk, Va., and through his tour of the American establishment, is an unreconstructed sense of class awareness, or bitterness — or betrayal. The Democratic Party betrayed its working-man roots, just as Hillary Clinton betrayed the longtime Clinton connection — Bill Clinton's connection — to the working man. "The Clinton strength," he says, "was to play to people without a college education. High school people. That's how you win elections." And, likewise, the Republican party would come to betray its working-man constituency forged under Reagan. In sum, the working man was betrayed by the establishment, or what he dismisses as the "donor class." ... That's what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about. ..."
The Hollywood Reporter: Ringside with Steve Bannon
I think if one wants to understand 'Trumpism' and what may be ahead in the coming years, it is not a bad idea to understand where Steve Bannon comes from. But the article linked above does not mention Robert Mercer, the money man behind Breitbart and the Trump campaign.
6 comments:
I couldn't tell from the Wikipedia article if Mercer would be for a trillion dollar government spending program or not. It seems kind of like a strange view for an apparently very conservative Republican to have.
At this point nobody (including Trump I assume) really knows what will happen, but I think knowing what Robert Mercer wants would still be quite interesting.
I don't think we will see a simple 1T$ gov. spending program, but perhaps a combination of
"sell government property and use the proceeds" to set up an infrastructure bank, with input from private equity funds. Or something similar along the lines of what Wilbur Ross has proposed.
The interesting question is what "infrastructure" means: 20th century stuff (roads, bridges, etc.) or 21st century stuff (high speed internet, electric grid, intelligent traffic lights etc.)
Trump is relatively old, so I guess it will be mostly what he is familiar with (bricks over bits).
>> The interesting question is what "infrastructure" means: 20th century stuff (roads, bridges, etc.) or 21st century stuff (high speed internet, electric grid, intelligent traffic lights etc.)
If they really want to put workers with high school educations to work it definitely means roads, bridges, substations, power lines etc. But where do those workers go then. WWII was helpful in that way, but nuclear war doesn't appear to me to serve the same purpose.
Btw politico has more about Rebekah Mercer.
The reference to her desire for ideological purity in the Republican party is a bit unsettling.
A lot of what happened this year is a bit unsettling ...
I think there is now a 50% chance that the Trump presidency will turn into a major clusterf*ck within a few months.
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