I write from passion, often indistinguishable from anger,
People, in general, are far more likely to get active against injustice than active for justice. When things are good they are quiet, or they find something else to get angry about.
The 2000 election was decided, in large part, on “wedge issues” like guns and abortion, where minorities of the public could be made angry enough to vote. Those who had seen gains from the Clinton-era economy were less motivated. The result was close enough for a Republican court to steal, and we’ve been paying for that ever since.
Every major political change is motivated by anger, even if it is clothed in positive garments. Franklin Roosevelt’s theme song was Happy Days are Here Again, but the days were anything but happy, with unemployment at nearly 33% and hunger stalking the land. Barack Obama ran on change, on “Hope,” but what elected him was the fact that the economy was growing at a rate of -9% during that campaign.
So in every important election the battle is joined to tap into anger. The media is always surprised by this, and Democrats often suck at it, but anger is what drives turnout and turnout is what wins elections.
Every generational cycle has echoes of those that came before. We like to talk of Hillary Clinton as the “new Nixon,” we compare ISIS to Hitler, and we see VanillaISIS or police brutality in terms of the KKK. But I have long believed that the era ours is most like is that of the 1890s. It has the same sorts of problems. Rapid change, huge disparities of wealth and power, and a system that seems to be rigged in favor of the “big boys.”
Two movements rose to challenge that three generations ago. The Populists of William Jennings Bryan are often misunderstood as liberal for their economic prescriptions, but it always was a very conservative movement, focused as it was in trying to maintain a world of small farms and small shops that was being rendered obsolete. It evolved, over time, into a movement of racial and religious animus, with Bryan’s Populist Party running mate, Thomas E. Watson, becoming a titular leader of the Klan’s second riding and Bryan himself going down into literary history as the Bible-thumping Mathew Harrison Brady of “Inherit the Wind.”
The Populist Bryan of today is, believe it or not, the one and only Sarah Palin. Palin tapped into all these inchoate angers and fears, over foreigners, over the culture, and over America’s sinking reputation, in 2008 and has never let up. The GOP is her party. Whether Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is the nominee, or even if a “regular” Republican like Marco Rubio breaks through, she is driving the train. It is her ideas that would govern in that case.
The Progressive movement was something else. Born out of the shards of the “Mugwump” era that elected Grover Cleveland, it stood for business-friendly, slow, positive change. Even before Theodore Roosevelt progressives had delivered civil service reform, antitrust legislation, and more efficient capital distribution through regulated monopolies that could keep input costs to scaled factories down.
Business is often misunderstood as being an impediment to progress, and some businesses are. But growth comes from change, from progress, and those businesses that aren’t seeking monopoly rents usually support progressive causes. Large businesses are generally far more liberal than small ones.
This is the movement, led by technology, which Barack Obama signed on with in 2008. He has been the Theodore Roosevelt of this time, seeming to anger business interests while actually moving in concert with them. Just as Wall Street pantomimed its opposition to TR, so technology has often pretended to be opposed to this Administration, even while lining up beside him.
The anger of the moment is focused on Hillary Clinton as a Taft-like figure who promises to continue Obama’s policies, but whom many in her party distrust, and on Bernie Sanders, a figure roughly akin to the Theodore Roosevelt who ran against Taft in 1912, and beat him (while losing in turn to Democrat Woodrow Wilson). Sanders has done a much better job than Clinton of tapping into the righteous indignation that fueled the Progressive movement, the demand for big change rather than small reforms, and as this was written the outcome of the struggle between them was undecided.
History does not repeat, but it often rhymes. The arguments of Clinton and Sanders carry echoes of Vietnam, as though Taft and Bryan were re-fighting the Civil War. The only danger is that the two sides won’t be able to unite once the struggle is decided.
What might tip the balance? Again, I think the answer lies in anger. If someone on the Presidential campaign stump would get really angry about Flint’s water, about the enormous number of lead pipes that still exist, about the falling bridges and collapsing roadways around the country, they could then call for a National Infrastructure Bank that would get demand back up and get the economy growing again.
But let’s assume they don’t do that. What would happen in that case would likely be a replay of those Progressive-Era elections, with either Clinton or Sanders having a distinct advantage over a Trump or Cruz by virtue of having the power of growing businesses – technology industries – on their side as opposed to falling businesses, like oil. Disruption is a form of progress, disruption is what technology does, and harnessing this power, politically, is really what our era is all about.
I have been wrong before. The collapse of global stock markets last month took me by surprise. Deflation is a serious, global threat, driven by what technology has done just in the last 8 years – compressing markets – and what it threatens to do in the future – compressing health care delivery chains, energy creation and transportation systems, which is where millions of workers have sought shelter as bureaucrats, drillers or drivers.
My guess is that the Republicans will overplay their hand. My guess is that they will get technology leaders angry enough, make them feel threatened enough, that a Democratic landslide becomes inevitable, especially if either Clinton or Sanders can harness the anger growing on the left over issues like income inequality, which I call the recycling of petrodollars and tech dollars into the larger economy.
Still, as they say on the sports beat, “that’s why they play the games.” The future is inherently unknowable. Republicans could triumph in 2016 and get people really angry in 2017, angry enough to lead to violence.
We’ll see.
