Donald Trump and the "burn it down" theory of American politics, at the conclusion of his presidency

 When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, one of the ideas that circulated in some quarters of the left was what I started to call the "burn it down" theory of American politics.  To some, it was a kind of silver lining to Trump's victory.  It went a little something like this.  Yes, Donald Trump was terrible.  But in fact, he would be so terrible that he would bring about a kind of political renaissance, revitalizing a left-wing movement and bringing about the kinds of political reforms that could never happen otherwise.  Just as the Great Depression was a precursor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, Trump would be a precursor to a revitalized left that would bring about... I dunno.  Somethin'.

I addressed the notion periodically on The Unmutual Political Blog, with reference to Ra's Al Ghul, from Batman Begins.

In this version of Batman, Ra's has a philosophy.  Every once in a while, you have to burn it down because the world has just gotten too corrupt.  The result will be something better.

The idea had an appeal to a certain faction of the left in 2016.  That'd be the far left.  The Sanders left.  And periodically during Trump's Presidency, I have checked in on the theory.  At its conclusion, let's do a look back.  There are a few interesting points to make.

First, from the vantage point of December 26, 2020, Trump did kinda burn it down, didn't he?  Second, what are the ideological dynamics that have resulted?  Hmmm...  The Democratic Party has shifted left.  But that's complicated.

Let's start, though, with Trump's arson rampage.  The thing is, throughout most of his term, I rejected the analogy of burning it down.  Levitsky & Ziblatt, in How Democracies Die, describe the slow process of eroding democratic norms, and that was very much what was happening to the country throughout most of Trump's term.  What happens now that Trump gets his loser ass thrown to the curb is very much up in the air.  Yet, Trump didn't burn down the Reichstag, and Barr didn't arrest anybody named, "Biden."  Much to Trump's chagrin.

And where this gets uncomfortable for the left is that until about March of this year, the economy was fuckin' fantastic.  Yes, Trump brags, and yes his bragging will always go above what is warranted, but the economy really was great.  That does not mean everything was perfect, nor that Trump was doing a good job.  It just means he wasn't burning it down.

One could argue that he was trying.  Trade war, 'n all.  Mercantilism is still stupid.  However, Trump was not burning down the country.  He didn't manage that until COVID hit, and a crisis allowed his mismanagement chops to shine in all of their lack of lustre.

From the vantage point of December of 2020, has he burned it down?  Yup.  From the vantage point of any point before March?  Nope.  He was terrible, yes.  Corrupt, incompetent, cruel, stupid, anti-democratic in the small-d sense, all of those things.  But he hadn't burned it down.

Yet what was going on in the Democratic Party?  The far left was ascendant, as though he had.  When the Great Depression hit, part of the political response was the notion that a new political and economic paradigm was necessary.  Hoover just... sucked.  Sorrynotsorry.  "Liberalism" was, quite literally, redefined.  As in, we use the word differently because of the changing politics of the New Deal era.  It was the development of an ideology based around what Isaiah Berlin called "positive liberty" rather than "negative liberty."

Gee, I really wish I could get lazy scholars from other disciplines and subdisciplines to learn a little bit about etymology and US political history before they lecture me about my own subject's terminology, but that'd be a pipe dream.  Yeah, I got names in mind, but I ain't sayin' 'em today.  I detest the combination of sanctimoniousness and laziness.

Anyway, after the Depression burned the country to the ground, a new left arose based around a conception of liberty in which having freedom requires having the resources to take advantage of that freedom-- positive liberty, contrasted with the negative conception, in which liberty simply means not having government infringe directly on your rights.  These days, though, everything is ass-backwards.  Trump won, and before COVID hit, before his COVID mismanagement burned the country to the ground, the Democrats acted like it already happened, and started moving far, far left.

Let's be clear about 2016.  Hillary Clinton beat the shit out of Bernie Sanders, which he deserved.  Metaphorically.  All metaphors, here.  I hate Sanders, though.  I still can't stand the guy.  Remember, I detest laziness and sanctimony.  Anyway, ideologically speaking, there wasn't really any daylight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  That was the mainstream of the party, going back a couple of decades.  That was the Lyndon Johnson tradition of Great Society policies, combining New Deal-style welfare state redistribution, ramped up for the early 21st Century, with civil rights.  Sanders is of a different ilk.  And he lost.  (Yay!)

Yet after 2016, the Sanders faction was ascendant.  Before Trump burned the country to the ground.  The party acted as though a new paradigm was needed to rebuilt a country, burnt to the ground, before the conflagration.  Sanders, to his somewhat-credit, is at least a true believer.  But you get the rise of Elizabeth Warren, who doesn't even believe the shit she spews.  She just saw which way the wind seemed to be blowing (more on that momentarily), so she went from being an Obama-style Democrat to trying to get to Sanders's left.  And oh, how her star did rise.  The left then embraces its own Trump-style social media demagogs, who don't know anything about policy, but know their way around Twitter like fellow teenage bullies.  And somehow, a bunch of first-term House members who don't know anything and don't do anything suck up all the oxygen while Pelosi keeps doing the hard work.  Again, though, all of this happens before the country goes all flame-y.

Yet, it is more complicated still.  After all, while Donald Trump sulks, plays golf, and demands that his soul-broken minions continue trying to steal the 2020 election for him in ever-more-ludicrous attempts at autocracy, there's another guy who's about to be sworn in as president.  And it ain't that idiot commie, Sanders!  It's... um... [checks notes]...

Wait, that can't be right.  I thought the left was all, ascendant, 'n shit.  Aren't they sacrificing their first born children to Ginsburg*, and their second born to Engels?  What the Col. Sanders's clucking cluck?!  Biden?  OK.  Biden.

Actually, truth be told, my opinion is that the country can do a hell of a lot worse than Biden, senile or otherwise.  As, well, we've just seen.  And there were many worse candidates on the Democratic side!  Would he have been my first choice?  No, but there are 330,000,000 people in this country, and sulking if you don't get your first-and-only choice is the Bernie-bro move.  As a general rule, ask yourself this question:  what would a Bernie-bro do?  Then, don't do that.

Anyway, though, way back in the before time, Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden, Biden won South Carolina, and yadda-yadda-yadda, Biden got the nomination.  COVID hit, and say hello to President Creepy Hair Smeller.  At least that rape accusation looks pretty much like bullshit now, so he's just a bit creepy rather than a full-on rapist.  Yay.  As long as he listens to scientists, I'm a happy scientist.

Off track.  Anyway, what happened to that ascendant left?  Well, his platform is way left of where it was in 2008.  So is that a "victory" for the burn-it-down model, presuming you agree with the far-lefty-ism of that far-left platform, which is way too far left for me?  (What was I gonna do, though?  Vote for Trump?)

And then there's that little matter of Congress.  In 1932, we had ourselves a special, little snowflake of an election.  Once upon a time, political science had itself a model.  The model of the "critical election," or the, "realignment."  You will sometimes still see that latter word.  The model comes from V.O. Key, and his claim that American electoral politics followed 30-40 year cycles.  Key claimed that American electoral politics would form an equilibrium that would last for about 30-40 years, and then there would be a "critical election," in which a "realignment" would occur.  Big political earthquake in which everything would shift.  The ideological nature of the parties, the geographic bases of their support, and blah, blah, blah.  The model was one of those things that we all had to study back when I was in grad school, but then David Mayhew came along and called bullshit on the whole endeavor with more thorough data analysis than anyone had ever done before.  Basically, he argued that the only election that really fit the bill was 1932.  That special, special snowflake of an election in which the country burned down, FDR came into power, and a new political/economic paradigm took over.

Part of that election, though, was that the Democrats swept into power in Congress too.

So... hey, that didn't happen, did it?  Didn't happen in the House, and the Democrats may not even have a majority in the Senate.  But let's say the Dems pull it out in those two Georgia runoffs.  Could happen.  Dunno.  What if they do?  That's a 50/50 Senate with Harris as the tie-breaker.  Is it Green New Deal time?

Nope.

Do you think Joe Manchin will vote for any of that Bernie Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez commie crap?

Even if the Democrats use the "budget reconciliation" procedure, which allows the Senate to pass legislation without worrying about the filibuster, they still have to deal with Joe Manchin.  One guy.  The 2020 election did not sweep the far-far-lefties into power.

Donald Trump convinced a segment of the American political world that he would create an opening for a kind of new left.  It didn't really happen, but the left moved further left anyway, and they did it before he burned things down.  The 2020 election didn't even given them the tools to enact much of anything.  They lose Manchin in the Senate, as they will on many if not most votes, and that's it.  And that's presuming the Democrats win those Georgia runoffs.

If the GOP wins those runoffs, the Dems get nothin'.  Four years of absolute gridlock.  If McConnell holds onto the Senate, Biden will not get one, single piece of significant legislation through.  Not one.

So how'd the burn-it-down theory do?  Well, when COVID hit, Trump finally managed to burn it down.  However, the left moved left too hastily.  They didn't get the power they expected, and they won't get any real policy victories.

Lesson:  don't burn things down.  Don't cheer for arson either.  Ra's Al Ghul was the bad guy.  Batman was the good guy.  Even though he was rich.

Idiots.

*Whose arrogant refusal to step down under Obama's administration is why Barrett is on the bench!  Still sayin' it 'cuz it's still true!