It’s a massive demonstration and it’s not just in the big blue cities:
That’s just a smattering of the posts coming from all over the world.
People are desperate to DO SOMETHING. This won’t change things in itself but the timing is perfect. Trump just crashed the world economy because he’s demented. This is just the beginning.
Aaaaand. It’s still all good!
Lol. Nothing to see here…
Political scientist Alan Abramowitz says in his new paper about the white working class in America, “it’s not the economy, stupid.” I think we knew this but it’s good to see some empirical study into the phenomenon. Pace Karl Marx, “class” is not just an economic designation.
Key points:
— While the state of the economy was likely an important factor in the 2024 presidential election and other recent contests, discontent over economic conditions doesn’t really explain the movement of white working class voters to the Republican Party in the longer-term.
— Rather, ideological realignment was probably a larger driver of white working class voters, once the base of the Democratic Party decades ago, into the Republican column.
Racial and cultural issues better explain GOP dominance with white working class
[…]
The dramatic shift in the partisan alignment of white working class voters over the past several decades, and especially the overwhelming support of this voting bloc for Donald Trump, has led to considerable speculation about the reasons for the rise of white working class Republicanism. Much of this speculation has focused on changes in the U.S. economy that have had a detrimental impact on the economic security and standard of living of this group. Since the 1970s, according to this theory, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. as a result of automation and competition from low-wage countries like China and Mexico has devastated many working class communities and led to growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party, whose leaders were seen as complicit in these changes. Donald Trump, with his focus on the grievances of those who felt left behind by changes in American society, was especially effective in appealing to these disillusioned white working class voters.
In this article, I examine the rise of white working class Republicanism in American politics. Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, I argue that economic discontent has very little to do with this phenomenon. Instead, I argue that the growing attraction of white working class voters to the Republican Party is a result of the ideological realignment of the political parties over the past 50 years. The growing divide between the Democratic and Republican parties over economic, racial, and cultural issues has led to an ideological realignment within the electorate. Groups with relatively conservative policy preferences, including white voters without college degrees, have shifted their allegiances to the Republican Party while groups with relatively liberal policy preferences, including white college graduates, have shifted their allegiances to the Democratic Party. These findings have important implications for the future of electoral competition and for party strategies.
I know you know this. We’ve traveled down the “economic anxiety” road for years now trying to explain Trump’s appeal. It’s really about hostility and grievance toward “the other” and Trump is a master at stoking that hatred.
But that’s not to say the economy isn’t relevant. Trump’s salesmanship and good fortune gave him a strong economy from Obama that was in the final phase of a recovery from the hell that he’d inherited from George W. Bush. He was constrained from doing all the cockamamie plans he had in his mind by people around him but also the Republicans in congress who were not yet united in their worship of the Golden God Trump. In the first two years they spent all their capital on tax cuts and banning Obamacare and came very close to achieving both. He lost the House in the midterms and hadn’t yet figured out that he was untouchable and could literally do anything he chose by executive fiat and no one would stop him. And then there was COVID.
This time he won on the basis of a “vibe recession” basically a bad hangover from the pandemic in which people just didn’t feel good about anything. He promised to fix everything on day one, particularly the cost of living and it is highly probable that his margin of victory consisted of people who were voting on the basis of their pocketbooks and just wanted to throw the bums out. What he’s doing now is going to send shock waves through the entire country and even some MAGAs are going to be shaken up by it. So the economy does matter and it is often a sort of stand-in for general discontent.
But what Abramowitz says is clearly the reason for the permanent migration of much of the white working class to the Republican Party. It’s a very big group and it’s what makes it hard to get beyond the polarization that makes our politics so fraught and our elections so close. I keep hoping that over time, as people grow up with diversity in our culture being just a normal fact of life that this will smooth out. But the backlash to this transition from a traditional white dominant American culture to a modern multi-cultural one is fierce and it looks like we’re going to go back and forth between “woke” and “broke” for a while.
Trump skipped a ceremony for fallen soldiers to play golf but don't forget the time Biden did something worse: attended the same ceremony and looked at his watch pic.twitter.com/1uI5sUvAUb
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 4, 2025
Yes, Trump went to a golf event at his club in Florida rather than attend the dignified transfer ceremony of the soldiers who died in Lithuania last week. But then they’re just a bunch of suckers and losers so what would we expect?
This is a minor atrocity by comparison to all the major atrocities of the last week but I just had to note it. All the years we’ve had to put up with the right waving the flag and “love it or leave it” and “these colors don’t run” and today they worship a man who could barely even be bothered to mention dead soldiers much less attend the ceremony to receive them back to the United States.
This isn’t a new thing for him. Recall in the first term:
In the world of President Donald Trump, he has paid his respects to “many, many” returning soldiers killed in the line of duty, with daughter and top presidential aide Ivanka Trump adding that “each time” she has stood by his side at one of these ceremonies, it has hardened his resolve to bring troops home.
In the real world, Trump has traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware exactly four times ― fewer than half as many times as his vice president ― and avoided going at all for nearly two years after getting berated for his incompetence by the father of a slain Navy SEAL, according to a former White House aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bill Owens, the father of William “Ryan” Owens, refused to shake Trump’s hand at that Feb. 1, 2017, encounter, the aide said, and then told Trump that he was responsible for his son’s death for approving the disastrous raid in Yemen without bothering to understand the risks.
“He refused to go back for two years, he was so rattled,” the aide said, adding that the main reason Trump had approved the raid just five days after taking office was that predecessor Barack Obama had refused to do so.
What’s more, Trump made the decision at a social dinner that included his son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, and then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon, rather than his National Security Council staff.
That’s how he rolls. And he’s getting worse.
They gave Trump a menu of tariffs to choose from and he picked his good buddy Pete’s special recipe:
Not long after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration’s economic staff went to work on a daunting task: determining tariff rates for dozens of countries to fulfill the president’s campaign pledge of imposing “reciprocal” trade barriers.
After weeks of work, aides from several government agencies produced a menu of options meant to account for a wide range of trading practices, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Instead, Trump personally selected a formula that was based on two simple variables — the trade deficit with each country and the total value of its U.S. exports, said two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount internal talks. While precisely who proposed that option remains unclear, it bears some striking similarities to a methodology published during Trump’s first administration by Peter Navarro, now the president’s hard-charging economic adviser. After its debut in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, the crude math drew mockery from economists as Trump’s new global trade war prompted a sharp drop in markets.
Look, it could have been worse. He could have asked Laura Loomer to pick some numbers. Maybe Kanye West or Libs of TikTok.
Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined to listen to a single voice — his own — to secure what he views as his political legacy.
“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
Speaking of a bad story:
4000 PTS DROP IN TWO DAYS.
$6 TRILLION GONE IN 48 HOURS
And he doesn’t give a fuck.
Puppies, kittens and a good stiff drink. I have never needed it more.
And make it a double
IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.
“The most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”
For once in his life, Lutnick is right – if factories come back to the U.S., they will be highly automated and will create relatively few good-paying jobs. Which means lots of people will be disappointed. https://t.co/IH4j50E8qY
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 4, 2025
I’ve been wondering about this. Apparently, there won’t be a whole lot of new manufacturing jobs so if anyone is expecting that this will restore the glory years of good paying factory jobs where Americans were all (supposedly) living large in a thriving middle class, think again.
I guess the idea here is that we’ll destroy the global economy, withdraw to our own shores, build Trump’s Iron Dome over the country to protect ourselves and pick vegetables or work as servants for our wealthy overlords. I’m not sure I’m being sarcastic when I say that.
By the way, here’s our Dear Leader today:
I’m sure you find it as reassuring as I do that the president of the United States is ranting like that on a day when the markets all dropped by more than 5%. Again.
Trump's ICE disappeared a 52-year-old mother from Westminster, Maryland.
— LongTime
Agents refused to show her a warrant—smashing the driver's side window & yanking her out of the car with no explanation.
She has no criminal record & is legally in U.S. due to a pending immigration case.… pic.twitter.com/GG2a5uXWWDFirstTime
(@LongTimeHistory) April 4, 2025
Another criminal gang member disappeared off the streets by masked secret police.
What’s the difference between this and the Gestapo? I honestly don’t know.
They’re coming for Medicare and Medicaid. Talking Points Memo reports:
On March 31st, CMS COO Amy Brandt sent out instructions for major cuts that had to take place across CMS. As she explained, HHS had been assigned a total amount of savings from canceled contracts. And of that total amount CMS was responsible for just over $2.7 billion. That amounted to 35% of CMS’s average total spend on contracts from the years FY2023 and 2024. So in technical terms, a shit-ton of money and a huge percentage of the overall budget.
As career CMS people have explained to me, CMS’s work is almost entirely contracted out. So this isn’t a case where you have most stuff done in house and some subset of the work is contracted out. It’s almost entirely contracted out. I further learned that the IT component is responsible for at least $750 million of that. The request came down on March 31st with responses due on April 3rd, i.e., today. So four days to decide how to cut more than a quarter of the CMS budget.
I’m told by knowledgable sources that there’s no way to cut this much without some parts of the system simply ceasing to function. So they’ll come up with a proposed plan, warn about what will break and wait to hear back. The Brandt memo says those recommendations will be reviewed and the final decision on cuts will go into effect on April 18th.
Don’t worry they’re confirming Dr. Oz to run this so I’m sure it will be fine. Maybe his friend Oprah can help.
I don’t even want to think about what happens when they fuck with Medicare. The people who have it use it . A lot. That’s what happens when you get old. If they break this one it’s going to lead directly to people dying. And a whole lot of very angry people who vote.
But then Trump oversaw hundreds of thousands of deaths of elderly people in the pandemic and didn’t blink an eye. Since people restored him to office despite his appalling performance in that crisis, why would anything be different this time?