Debating the Realignment
CrowdSource 12.23.2024
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: the Crowd responds to our live event.
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Responses to our Live Podcast with Oren Cass
Last week,
of joined us for a live taping of our podcast. We discussed the new Trump coalition, and whether the GOP is actually shifting toward being a pro-worker party. You can listen to the whole thing here (free for all subscribers).
We asked a few of the sharp minds who attended to write a response to the event:
Diana Brown of
:
In typical Wisdom of Crowds fashion, with far more festive flair, the holiday party conversation … was ambitious, warm-spirited, and offered a welcome refresh of political discourse following the election. It clearly aimed to grapple with the reality of a second Trump victory, and not default to moral grandstanding or self-pitying shock as though this were his first. … Beneath a garland of pine, scalloped across the ceiling and dotted with fairy lights, Sam opened by asking Cass to assess the status of the “American dream.” Cass said we should really be talking about the status of the “American promise” of economic security, not the dream of economic mobility.
- of The Dispatch:
If you’ve been in conservative circles for a while, you’ve heard the term “free-market fundamentalist” wielded as a pejorative against the Romney/Ryan remnants of the coalition. I grant Oren that there are certainly conservatives and libertarians out there who are too sanguine about present market conditions or who dismiss NatCon concerns through a reflexive deference to capitalism.
But listening to his answers about immigration in particular, I couldn’t help but feel as though he revealed a NatCon foil: Let’s call it, democratic-fundamentalism.
As Sam and Christine pressed Oren on the ethical dimensions of immigration, Oren responded: “One of the major mistakes that American politics and the elite made generally in the 1990s was to try to define a quite global scope for who counted and was supposed to be the subject of our policy. And the reality is that in a democracy, your constituents are ... the people who vote.” Much in the same way that “free-market fundamentalists” simply defer to utility maximization, he seemed to imply that if The People™ choose something, it must be good. The obvious response, though, is: Is it?
There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with deciding questions about immigration democratically — it’s needed, in fact. Oren’s right that a democratic people can legitimately (if perhaps not wisely) decide on a more restrictionist immigration regime. But there’s something profoundly dissatisfying about using democracy as a trump card to table serious ethical concerns. There are surely some things that Oren would think are bad to do to immigrants — even if most people agreed on doing so. For many, family separation and the prospect of mass deportations (whatever that is) ranks among them. Yet Oren didn’t really seem to entertain this point.
A more honest restrictionist position has to reckon with these concerns, with the worry that, as
said, there’s a “quiet callousness” in the Trumpian Right’s proposals. Yes, democracy makes decisions legitimate; but that doesn’t make them good.
- :
Oren Cass’s description of right-wing views on immigration — as being rooted not in some sinister hatred of the disenfranchised, but in economic anxiety and an understandable frustration at being ignored by the establishment for years — seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of voter attitudes in the wake of the election.
While I’m somewhat sympathetic to the view that the most moral stance on immigration is to prioritize the needs of the immigrant at least as much as the needs of the citizen, I agree with Cass that this is not an intuitive point for most people, is not politically realistic — and is certainly not a point that the left should assume as self-evident.
I would have liked to hear Sam and Christine, and the audience, engage more directly with those voter frustrations, or with their own assumptions underlying their liberal views on immigration, instead of immediately bringing the right’s sense of moral responsibility into question.
As it stands now, six weeks after Trump’s win, any focus on the right’s supposed moral neglect only emphasizes the hollowness of Democratic messaging on compassion and morality, and echoes the tone-deaf post election response of many liberal elites. At the live Wisdom of Crowds taping, the left’s hollowness underlined the sharpness of Cass’s reasoning.
The Car Dealership Theory of Realignment
The realignment debate was also the topic of a recent WoC podcast, “Did Trump Win the Working Class for Good?” In this clip, special guest,
defines the realignment as he sees it:From the Crowd
Also reflecting on our live podcast with
, makes this important distinction:
I have a Master’s in educational administration, and I taught public school for six years. Then I went into the skilled trades. Two different worlds. The mistake that too many college graduates make is in thinking that their 'advanced' education indicates that they are smarter and more intelligent. It does not. It serves only to make you a legend in your own mind. I have said many times, and will keep saying it; manipulating people is easy, manipulating reality is tough. Teachers manipulate people. Skilled tradesmen manipulate reality. As I said, two different worlds.
I’m just a little confused I guess why the guest is voting for Trump beyond merely because it will bring a smile to his face? What is it exactly that brings a smile to his face about the orange one? Even though Trump may speak at events such as the March for Life, the speaker cannot believe Trump actually cares about such issues? He strikes me as a curiously amoral figure- someone who is not a fascist or a racist but a man who could only exist in the age we live in today. A man who loves the spotlight and hates being called a “loser.” I’m not sure why anyone would think genuinely this is what the Republican Party would want? He’s the antithesis of conservative values, is he not?
If we look at the foreign policy profile of Trump, just on the two examples given, Afghanistan and North Korea, they are ultimate failures. Trump’s deal with the Taliban was disastrous and from what I’ve read it was only Bolton and others who stopped Trump undoing years of work on the North to try and limit their capability and building a sanctions regime by collapsing the talks in the end. I don’t tend to think Trump builds his cabinet for a difference of views but rather reflects his lack of values except for the slavishness of how far someone will go to protect him.
I totally get why conservatives and non-conservatives look at the democrats and ask are they any better, perhaps they aren’t much better, but Trump’s record is also one of miserable failure. Perhaps even more dangerous is the potential for him to sell out Ukraine giving Russia a green light to go further in Europe than he has already. Indeed, if we look at someone like Tulsi Gabbard, this isn’t merely someone from left field but a conspiracy theorist who belongs on a low-frequency talk radio show, not the State Department.
So, ultimately I was still left a little confused about why on a deeper level someone would still want to vote for and have a second round of President Trump. Not just because of his amoral cynicism but his vision for the country in my mind does not align with a conservative one at all unless they're willing to sell out their values for this pound shop huckster. Even after the capitol riots, the recklessness over covid, the personalization of the office, and let's be honest, the increasing amount of dangerous people around him it strikes me as odd that anyone could signal a defense beyond “vibes” and I don’t like the Dems of which neither strike me as sufficient. Maybe as Shadi says people’s hearts aren’t in the fight against him anymore but that doesn't mean he's not still a problem figure? He’s clearly still fighting the restraints institutions try to place around him.
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Certainly agree with Parrales. Also remarkable how public impressions about the economy have improved since the election in the absence of any actual changes.